


When You Get Older

by evewithanapple



Category: Hanna (2011)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-28
Updated: 2011-10-28
Packaged: 2017-10-25 01:19:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after her brush with a mysterious girl and an even more mysterious government agency, Sophie is now in her first year of university, concentrating on her studies and trying not to think about the girl who still haunts her thoughts. But when Hanna unexpectedly drops back into her life, Sophie can no longer ignore what the other girl represents- to the world, and to herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Get Older

_I need some kind of miracle_  
 _'Cause I lost all my faith in science_  
 _So I put my faith in me_  
  
-Robyn, "Cry When You Get Older"

 

Sophie had a pounding headache.

She’d stumbled back to the forms the night before, after visiting the campus bar, imbibing more alcohol than Russell Brand on a Mardi Gras weekend, and getting into a shouting match with her friend Lisa. Now sore, nauseated, and suitably ashamed of herself, she really wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed and not poke her head out for the rest of the day. Possibly the week.

Her alarm clock, unfortunately, had other ideas.

Groaning, she rolled over and thumped the top of the radio, sending the weather announcer’s voice into a blur of static. She threw an arm over her eyes- even the mild sunlight peeping in from between the blinds was too much- and sighed. Bloody beer. Bloody Lisa. What had they been arguing about, anyway?

Oh, right. One of Lisa’s great ideas. She’d been trying to set Sophie up with one of her Sociology classmates- some blond with an overabundance of spray tan and teeth that actually hurt to look directly at- and hadn’t taken too well to Sophie turning her down.  Somehow, the first few iterations of “I’m really not looking for a boyfriend right now” hadn’t taken, and she’d had to escalate to yelling. Not that she hadn’t been doing that before the argument had gotten heated. Sometimes she thought that clubs blasted the music at top volume just to keep the entire building from being torn down in a drunken brawl.

_“I thought he’d be your type!”_

With a sigh, Sophie rolled out of bed, and immediately regretted it as her stomach rolled with her. Gingerly- she didn’t want to puke all over the carpet, especially as it’d just been cleaned- she stood up and twisted the dial on the radio, flipping over to the morning news before heading to the dresser to find some clean clothing. God, even the lingering smell of detergent made her queasy. _Never again._

She rooted through the pile of clothes on the top of the dresser- she still hadn’t bothered to fold or stuff the laundry into drawers- until she managed to find a relatively scent-free t-shirt and pulled it on, followed by a pair of shorts. The newsreader was rambling on about some drunk-and-disorderly  arrests in town the night before. Apparently someone _had_ had a worse night than her.

“-and in nearby news, the Norwich police force is searching for a young blonde woman termed a ‘person of interest’ after a series of cars were broken into.”

 _Wait. What?_ Frowning, Sophie reached over and turned up the volume. The newscaster continued, “no items of value were stolen, though some did report food items missing from their cars, which appeared to have been slept in. Police have declined to comment on what action they plan to take, but encourage anyone with information to contact their hotline at five oh nine, nine six four . . . “

 _Stupid,_ Sophie thought, pressing her thumb down on the off button. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ What kind of astronomical coincidence would be required for her to show up in _Norwich_ of all places, when Sophie just happened to be at school there? It was probably just some vagrant who happened to be blonde and female. It wasn’t like blonde women were a rare commodity only glimpsed in nature preserves or sad commercials with Sarah McLachlan songs and narrators begging viewers to send in a pound to save the species from dying out. She was being _stupid_.

The faint scent of bacon was beginning to waft in from under her suitemate’s door, and it made her stomach lurch. First order of business: coffee. Then she had to go and find Lisa, apologize for the previous night’s fiasco, and try to salvage her Social and Political Theory paper before she turned it in on Tuesday and completely ruined her grade.

* * * *

Hanna hadn’t slept the night before.

She had tried going back to the car she’d been in earlier, but it was surrounded by police tape and scowling officers, so instead she fled. After she’d been rousted from several park benches in London, she’d known better than to try sleeping out in the open, but she also didn’t have any alternatives. Spring had begun several weeks ago but it hadn’t yet abated the bite of cold in the air, and although she’d huddled under an awning overnight, she hadn’t been able to fall asleep. She’d left her jacket behind in Dieppe before crossing the Channel because someone had snapped a photo of her, but she missed it. Her shirt was too thin to protect her from the weather, and it was frequently soaked through with rainwater. She shivered, and wrapped both arms around herself.

She put a hand into the back pocket of her jeans, touching the ragged edge of a piece of paper. She carried very little with her- early on, she had tried carrying a rucksack, but it quickly became too cumbersome, and she had abandoned it in Brussels. This was the only item she’d kept while crossing through Germany and France: a faded bit of paper, creased in several places, the ink running from when it had been doused in ocean water. She had read it so often, she had the words memorized.

_Marissa Wiegler_

_5196749000_

_RE: David Jancovik_

_London Branch_

  
_The lamb has caught the wolf_

  
_Be careful of the rooster_

She had read over dozens of times, but still couldn’t decipher it. Who was the rooster? What was the wolf? What did the numbers mean? She had pulled it out of Marissa’s jacket pocket, looking for something- anything- about her mother. Instead all she’d found was a handful of change (she’d spent that in a fast food restaurant- a mouthful of French fries for two euros, that had ended up giving her a stomach-ache anyway) a pen, and the paper.

She didn’t know what it meant. But she could read the words, and one of them- _London_ \- clicked somewhere in her mind. London was in England. She knew where England was. Sophie had been from England. Sophie and her family had been kind to her. She could trust them. They might be able to help.

As the morning light grew brighter, she stood, and took her hand out of her pocket. She had several miles still to travel that day, and no transportation beyond her feet.  Best to get started right away.

* * * *

Several cups of coffee later, Sophie was feeling better- or at least, “not dead,” which was a step up from how she’d felt when she woke- she scrubbed her face clean, swiped a stick of lip gloss across her mouth, and headed out, backpack slung over her shoulder. She was already fifteen minutes late for class, but hopefully the prof wouldn’t notice if she slipped in the back door.

Fortunately for her, a movie was playing when she came in, and no one even looked up when the door closed. She slipped into the seat next to Lisa, who was watching the film through half-closed eyes, her head resting on her notebook. She cracked one eye opened when Sophie sat down. “Hey.”

“Hi.” she said awkwardly. “So, about what happened-”

Lisa waved a hand. “No worries. You were drunk. I was drunk. Everybody was drunk. Forget it.”

She should have left it at that, but her conscience prodded at her. “I didn’t mean to-”

“Shhh!” someone hissed from across the aisle. Lisa lifted an arm lazily to flip a rude hand gesture in his direction. “No more blind dates. I get it. Concentrate on your schoolwork. Purify your body. All that shit. Let me sleep, okay?” She closed both eyes again. In the background, rapid bursts of gunfire sounded from the television, mingled with shouts and the rattling of artillery. Sophie felt suddenly very tired. Lisa’s strategy seemed like a good one. She folded both arms on her desk, laid her head down next to her, and closed her eyes.

When the class was over- having taken no notes, but watched several hours of History Channel programming- Sophie and Lisa crossed the courtyard centered in the middle of campus. Sophie’s headache, already diminished from the coffee, had largely subsided during her class-induced nap, so the weak sunlight only hurt her eyes a little. She and Lisa were in the middle of an animated conversation about the relative historic merits and artistic merits of wartime propaganda (ostensibly what they were meant to read about for next week’s class) when Sophie froze mid-step.

“Ow!” Lisa yelped, running headfirst into her back. “Warn me the next time you do that, will you? I like to know when I’m about to hit a roadblock.”

Sophie didn’t answer. She was too busy focusing on the opposite side of the courtyard- more specifically, on the figure standing there, half-hidden in the shadow of the overhanging building. She- she assumed it was a she, anyway- was more than a little scruffy, dressed in a long-sleeved hooded shirt and jeans that had seen more wear than washings, with equally beat-up running shoes on her feet. Her hood was pulled up over her face, so Sophie couldn’t see her eyes. But she could see her hair, long and tangled, spilling out over her shoulders.

Blonde hair.

_It can’t be._

“Hey, Sophie?” Lisa poked her in the back. “You planning on moving anytime soon? Because I don’t know about you, but I’d rather like to have lunch-”

“I’ll catch you up.” Sophie said faintly. With a shrug and an “if you say so,” Lisa sauntered off, leaving Sophie still planted on the flagstones of the courtyard, staring at the blonde figure. She still hadn’t moved.

It  _couldn’t_  be.

Slowly- she didn’t wanted to frighten the person off, and she certainly wasn’t going to go flying across the courtyard like she expected to be swept up in her arms or something- she edged towards the corner. Still, the figure didn’t move. Her steps felt slower than usual, though she was certain that she was walking at a regular pace, and her hands were trembling by the time she reached the far end of the courtyard. Hesitantly ( _this is ridiculous Sophie, what are you doing?)_  she reached out and pushed the hood back.

“Hello.”

“Oh my  _god_.” she said, loudly enough for several people nearby to turn their heads. The other girl glanced from side to side, as though she was afraid that Sophie’s voice would call down some weapon-wielding authority figure. Given what had happened last time (oh  _god_ ) perhaps it wasn’t such a far-off proposition.

“Hanna?” she said disbelievingly. “But you-  _how_ \- and why _here_ -?”

Hanna held a finger to her lips, shaking her head. “Not here.” She reached out and grasped Sophie’s arm tightly. “Can we go inside?”

“But-” There were a million questions pressing as the back of her throat-  _where have you been, how did you find me, why were those people after you, and oh hey, why did you slit those guys’ throats in front of me?_ \- but she could tell just looking at Hanna that she wasn’t going to get any of those answers standing in the courtyard. She swallowed. “Okay. Let’s go inside.”

* * * *

She took Hanna to the food court in the main plaza, and ordered them a pizza- she asked what toppings the other girl wanted, but she just looked at her in confusion- as well as a large bottle of Coke and a cookie. (The cookie was for her.) She didn’t yet feel up to touching the pizza, but that hardly mattered anyway; Hanna attacked it with the ferocity of someone who hadn’t eaten in days, possibly a week. Sophie munched quietly on her less-than-lunch (her father would probably tell her off if he knew; the idea was oddly relaxing) and watched the other girl devour her food. She wondered what Hanna had been eating for the past two years, if she had gotten a job- that idea almost made her laugh, Hanna waiting tables- if she’d been eating out of Dumpsters and snatching scraps from abandoned plates. That last thought made her want to reach out and squeeze the other girl’s hand, but Hanna still flinched whenever someone moved too close to her, so she didn’t.

Lisa showed up fifteen minutes after they did.

“ _Heyyyyyyyyyy_.” she said, dropping into the seat next to Sophie. Hanna looked up and cringed; Sophie shook her head, and she went back to chewing frenetically on the pizza. “Didn’t think I’d find you here; I figured you were off puking some more.” It was then that she noticed Hanna. “Who’s your friend?”

Hanna looked like she was contemplating whether to fight or flee, but she still politely swallowed her mouthful before answering. “Hanna.”

“Hanna, huh?” Lisa cocked her head in a way that somehow always meant impending danger. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard Sophie mention you.”

“We met on vacation,” Sophie said quickly, sparing Hanna the necessity of answering. “When we were ki- younger.”  _Kids_  sounded like such a weird word in this context; she’d been fifteen at the time, and as much as she cringed sometimes remembering what a brat she’d been, she couldn’t really call herself a child when she’d been sneaking out to ride on motorcycles with boys and swiping absinthe when her parents weren’t looking. But then she thought about the container park and the bright red arterial spray spattering across the pavement and the slapping sound of her flip-flops as she’d turned tail and ran away from her best friend.

She certainly hadn’t been an adult.

“ _Hmm_.” Lisa said. She lay both arms on the table, one crossed over the other, and raised her eyebrows at Hanna. “Hungry?”

“Yes.” Hanna said simply, taking another bite. That slowed Lisa down for a second, and Sophie bit back a snicker. She recovered quickly though, and asked, “So are you going to school here?”

That gave Sophie pause, and her eyes flicked from Hanna to Lisa and back again, waiting to see what would happen. She didn’t have an answer for that either, and she wanted to hear one.

“No.” Hanna said simply. “I’m visiting.” She set the last pizza crust down and glanced between Sophie and Lisa. “Are you . . . friends?” The word slipped from her tongue like it was unfamiliar, too hot to keep in her mouth. Sophie touched her wrist, remembering a warm night in Bahrain and a bracelet woven from multi-coloured threads.

_Thank you for being my friend._

“Lisa’s in my History class.” she said.

Lisa rolled her eyes. “Oh  _sure_ , that’s all I get? I let her copy my notes-” this to Hanna- “so she doesn’t flunk out. Oh and I loaned her money for drinks last night.” She stood up, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “Anyway, I’ve got to get to PoliSci. Later, bitch.” She punched Sophie lightly on the shoulder as she left, leaving an awkward silence at the table in her wake.

“I thought ‘bitch’ was an insult.” Hanna said.

“It is.” Sophie shook her head, grinning a little in spite of herself. “For Lisa, it’s a term of endearment. She’s weird that way.” She leaned forward, elbows on the tabletop. “So, what  _are_  you doing here?”

Hanna drew a piece of paper from her pocket, and laid it on the table in front of her. Sophie leaned forward to read it, but could only make out a handful of words on the page. Her lips moved silently, sounding out the words-  _London, caught, rooster_. “What does it mean? And what’s it got to do with m- with this place?”

“I don’t know what it means.” Hanna said, returning it to her pocket. “Marissa- the woman who was chasing me- had it when she found me.”

A vivid memory flashed before Sophie’s eyes- bright hair and an emotionless drawl that managed to sound cold even as it evoked cactuses and pick-up trucks. She shivered. “But why  _here_?” There was another question on her mind-  _what happened when she found you_?- but she wasn’t going to ask. Probably it made her a coward, but she didn’t want to know.

“You’re the only person I could trust.” Hanna said simply.

Sophie moistened her lips with her tongue, trying to wrap her mind around what Hanna had just said.  _Trust_  was a strange word to her- the school used it when it warned students against cheating, by her parents when they told her not to go out too late, by Lisa when she confided in her over cheap booze. It had never been used- towards her, anyway- in situations that involved assassins and dark figures in business suits and guns in their pockets. Certainly it wasn’t used with regards to someone who had broken a promise and fled when she discovered that the world her friend inhabited was too large and dark for her. It wasn’t a word for her.

She said nothing, but Hanna seemed to read her thoughts in her face. “It will be dangerous.” she said, making to stand up. “I can leave, if you don’t want me here.”

Sophie’s arm shot out almost of its own accord and took Hanna by the wrist. The other girl looked down. Still encircling the limb, dirty and tattered, was the friendship bracelet Sophie had given her all those years ago. She swallowed hard.

“I want to help you.” she said. “Where do we start?”

 

* * * *

 

 

“So is this your girlfriend?”

Sophie winced. Hanna blinked.

“Kidding!” Fred threw both hands up in the air with an easy grin. “Just kidding, Soph. And who is this lovely young lady you’ve neglected to introduce me to?”

“Hanna.” Sophie answered for her- Hanna hadn’t said a word yet, still blinking in confusion at Fred. “Ignore him,” Sophie muttered, “he reads too many fantasy novels.”

“ _Au contraire_ , my friend.” Fred said, with a grand gesture towards his cluttered desk, “I read too little these days. Come sit down.” He pulled a pair of chairs away from the desk behind him, and Sophie- after checking to make sure she wasn’t plunking herself down on a hardcover or a Lego- sat. Hanna perched on the other without preamble. “Sophie says you can help us.”

“Well that depends on what kind of help you’re after, darling.” he drawled. He knew Sophie hated it when he did that. Usually it seemed to be what motivated him. “Would you like an encyclopaedia of Star Wars characters? I can do that. How about a high-spirited debate on old versus new Battlestar Galactica? Because that’s in full supply. Or maybe-”

“Be serious for five minutes.” Sophie interrupted. Hanna, who looked slightly overwhelmed by the litany of pop culture references that had just been thrown at her head, had yet to say anything. Sophie couldn’t blame her. Most of it had gone over her head as well. “She- we need you to help us find some information. But you need to be quiet about it.”

Fred leaned forward, allowing the chair to thump back onto all fours. His eyes were already alight. “What information might that be?”

Sophie nodded to Hanna, who took the piece of paper from her pocket again and handed it to Fred. “I need to understand what this means.”

Fred scanned the paper, one eyebrow raised quizzically. “You couldn’t just . . . Google it?”

“You  _try_  Googling ‘5196749000.’” Sophie retorted. “And do you know how many David Jancoviks there are out there? Apparently one of them runs a furniture store.”

“Huh.” Fred had the end of a pen in his mouth, munching on it, his need to get on Sophie’s nerves apparently outweighed by his love of stupid spy stories. Thank god. “Well, the number’s easy enough. It’s a phone line.”

Hanna shook her head. “I tried calling. It said the number wasn’t in service.”

“Well, that  _is_ a puzzle.” he said. His eyes were gleaming in a way that usually meant trouble. “Tell you what: I’ll apply my Google-fu to this little problem of yours, and I’ll give sweet Sophie a call when I’ve worked it out. Capice?”

Sophie was about to answer for Hanna again- well, for Hanna, with a few choice words of her own added in- when Hanna said “Thank you.” Sophie’s head whipped around. Hanna was sitting upright in her seat- the kind of posture Sophie had spent years attempting before just giving up and resigning herself to a permanent slump- head slightly tilted, looking at Fred. There was no confusion on her face, just a kind of serenity. “I appreciate your help.”

Something hot and queasy twisted in Sophie’s stomach, looking at Hanna’s face. She looked away, and examined the wall moulding instead. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

Fred shrugged. “Two, three days? Depends on what I can hack into on the school server. They’ve been getting awfully touchy lately. Probably because I broke into Microsoft.”

“He’s kidding.” Sophie said, mostly because Hanna was looking at Fred with something like admiration, and that nasty twist in her stomach hadn’t gone away yet. “Well, see you then. If you’ll excuse us-” And she got out of her chair, pulling on Hanna’s arm as she rushed out of the room.

* * * *

“You know he’s gay, right?”

“Hmm?” Hanna didn’t look up from the bookcase.

“Fred.” Sophie clarified. “He’s got a boyfriend- he goes to school in Edinburgh, I think.” Actually, she’d met the guy; he’d come up to visit Fred last Christmas. He was pretty cute too, though not exactly Sophie’s type. Too short and football-shouldered, not long and gangly and light and that train of thought needed to stop  _right there_.

Hanna had been scanning her bookcase since they returned to Sophie’s room, fingers gently brushing the dusty titles. Some of them, she hadn’t picked up in months. Old textbooks from the previous semester, stuff her dorm-mates has foisted on her when they moved out, Christmas gifts from relatives that she had yet to open. Hanna drew one out, smoothing her fingers along the title. “May I look at this?”

Sophie glanced at it.  _Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit_ , from her Intro To Lit last semester. The professor had had some strange ideas about literary analysis; they’d spent the first two weeks picking out every adverb used in the first and last chapters and analyzing what it said about the narrators’ state of mind. At the end of that class, she’d been left with a book full of highlighter, an essay about the symbolic significance of water in the novel, and a final grade of 75%. Not bad, considering she hadn’t a fucking clue what she’d written.

“Go ahead.” she said, turning back to the computer screen. “It’s not a bad book, really. Better than some of my other assignments.” Like having to read fucking  _Madame Bovary_  for that mandatory French class. She’d skated through that class on SparkNotes and never looked back.

“Hmm.” said Hanna. She set the book down, and drifted over to stand behind Sophie. “What are you writing?”

Sophie hit “save” and minimized the window. “Essay for Intro to Philosophy . I have to prove or disprove Soctrates’ theory that humans can never  _become wise_.” She used finger quotes for the last two words, grimacing; who still talked like that, anyway? Moreover, who thought it was a good idea to ask  _her_  if people could be wise? Wise-ass, maybe. She was almost tempted to write that down.

“What do you think?”

Sophie twisted in her chair to look at Hanna, who was now sitting on the bed, looking curious. “Why do you ask?” She hadn’t figured Hanna for a philosopher.

A shrug. “I’m curious.” Hanna looked at her, eyes wide- well, as wide as they usually were- and devoid of the guile and half-hidden smirks she usually saw in the eyes of her classmates. She felt the tension headache knotting at the back of her skull loosen a bit.

“I don’t know.” she admitted. “I mean, I don’t think I’m wise, but maybe other people are.  _Probably_ other people are, since they’ve written whole books about this, and you have to be at least a little bit smart to do that. I’m just going to argue that it’s impossible for us to know, because if there’s wisdom beyond us, then we can’t realize it.”

Hanna nodded. “That makes sense.”

Sophie could feel a light flush spreading up the back of her neck. No one had ever said that about one of her essays before; “good grammar” maybe, or “nice word choice here.” The content itself had always been tactfully unremarked-upon. Hastily, she spun back to the computer and pulled the document up again.

From behind her, Hanna spoke again. “Are you going to keep studying philosophy?”

Sophie nearly choked on her laughter. “Me, a philosopher? I don’t think so.” The mental image it conjured up made her giggle in spite of herself. She’d sit on a rock, with a bunch of students clustered around her feet like one of those woodcuts they printed in her textbook. Maybe she’d attach a fake beard to complete the picture. “I’m not exactly the philosophizing type.”

“Then what will you do?”

The words- spoken innocently as they were- felt not unlike a punch in the stomach. Sophie sucked air in through her teeth, then let it out through her nose. Behind her, she could sense Hanna still sitting on the bed, comfortably quiet, possibly perturbed at the sudden silence that greeted her question. How was it that someone who didn’t even go to school and hadn’t seen her in years somehow managed to hit her right where it hurt without even meaning to?

“I don’t know.” she said shortly. Hanna, apparently able to understand the tone- if not the meaning behind it- said nothing.

* * * *

Hanna was restless.

Sophie had gone to sleep an hour earlier- class in the morning, she’d said- and turned down the other bed before curling up in her own. But Hanna couldn’t sleep. She’d prowled silently around the room for fifteen minutes, examining the books on the bookshelf again, aimlessly tidying the desk, and flipping through the book she’d borrowed by the light of Sophie’s penlight. Still, she couldn’t seem to settle in one place.

It used to be that when she couldn’t settle herself, she would go out for a hunt, or to train. Hunting was out of the question now; there was no need for it, and besides, she hadn’t done it in- had it really been years- not since she had stepped into a world of packaged food and domesticated animals. She wondered sometimes if she was even capable of it anymore, after years of encounters with things that sniffed her hand and rubbed up against her instead of snapping or fleeing from her footsteps. Training was the better option- not necessary anymore, really- not since her life had become a series of dark corners and alleyways ducked into to avoid the police, and the only exercise she got was when she had to run away from an approaching car- but she  _liked_ doing it, and moreover, she wanted to-  _needed_  to- be prepared if-

Well, if she needed to be.

She glanced behind her as she slipped out the door; Sophie turned over in her sleep, but didn’t wake. With a small smile on her face, Hanna closed the door. Going to Sophie had been a gamble on her part; if the other girl even  _remembered_  her, why would she agree to help a virtual stranger who appeared out of nowhere spinning stories about spies and government agencies and DNA alteration? She wouldn’t believe it herself. She had expected to be thrown out on her ear (she’d learned that phrase from an abandoned copy of Oliver Twist she’d picked up from a cardboard box sitting on a curb in London) as soon as she explained herself. She hadn’t expected to be taken in, offered food, and given help without so much the bat of an eye (another phrase she’d picked up from books.)

Sophie was- different? Not really. Her speech had slowed down, and she didn’t seem as loud as she had before, but she looked the same. And her voice was the same. There was just something more- subdued about her. Hanna couldn’t put her finger on it. It was like she’d shrunken in on herself, folded and turned inside out so that the outside part of her was dimmer, less noticeable. No, noticeable wasn’t the right word- what was? She couldn’t pick one.

The world made more sense when she was running. With her legs and arms occupied, blood pumping through her brain, everything seemed clearer, the wind shaking loose the debris cluttering up her brain and leaving the space empty for more important things.

Currently on her mind: the paper. She’d turned it over and over in her head ever since she’d found it, analyzed every word, dissected the sentences to see the darkened insides; still, none of it made any sense. Perhaps she was the lamb, and Marissa the wolf? But if that was so, who was the rooster? Lambs, she remembered from her father’s readings, were a symbol of innocence, sometimes associated with the Christian messiah. The wolf symbolized deception and danger, sometimes contrasted with lambs and sheep-  _a wolf in sheep’s clothing_. That made sense. But why the rooster? What did the numbers mean? Who was David Jankovic?

She shook her head, sending her hair whipping to and fro in the breeze. She’d been trying to puzzle it out for the past three years, and still it made no sense. Instead, she shifted her thoughts to Sophie. Had she been happy to see her? She seemed to be, if a bit startled. That made her happy. It had been a long time since she’d had someone happy to see her- actually, it had been a long time since anyone had really seen her at all. For two years, she’d stayed in Berlin, alternating between sleeping in a shelter for those without homes and prowling the streets. She’d gone back to her grandmother’s house several times ( _Grandmother, what a nice big smile you have_ -) back to Grimm’s, and several times to the park where she’d last seen her father. She didn’t know where he was buried,  _if_ he was buried. She wished she did.

When she wasn’t exploring, she spent her time at the public library. After a failed attempt at taking a book with her that had resulted in several alarms going off, the librarians had been happy to give her a card. She’d spent hours in the history section, leafing through volumes about Ludwig the Swan King, who built palaces all over the country and drowned in Lake Starnberg; Martin Luther nailing his theses on the church door of Wittenberg; and Nicolaus Copernicus’s discovery of how the earth rotated around the sun. It was all like something out of her book of fairy tales. Then she’d read further, found thick, dark swastikas illustrating articles about events called Kristallnacht, where windows were smashed and shopkeepers beaten; trucks full of people packed away like livestock, driven away and never seen again; and a man named Josef Mengele who injected babies with strange chemicals to see what he could make them do. That afternoon, she had set the book down in a cold sweat and walked out of the library into the bright afternoon sunshine. It hadn’t taken the chill out of her bones.

Was that her?

Was she an experiment?

What about the people who had made her? Were they disciples of Mengele, following in his footsteps trying to create the perfect being? The  _Ubermensch_ , the books had called it. Was that her? Was she their prodigy? Did that make her one of them? When that thought had occurred to her, she’d had to run and be sick behind a nearby rosebush.

She had never gotten an answer to that question.

What had she been thinking about?

Sophie. She’d been thinking about Sophie. Sophie who’d taken her in without blinking (well, maybe a little), Sophie who’d loaned her a book, Sophie who, two years ago, tied a bracelet around her wrist and called her a friend. No one else had ever called her that before. She’d kept the friendship bracelet- it grew dirty and battered with the years, and she could no longer really see the colours of it, but she’d never taken it off her wrist. She’d developed a habit of twisting it around her fingers when she was nervous, which had resulted in several of the threads fraying, but still it held together. She needed it sometimes, to remind her.

Though she wasn’t out of breath yet, she slowed to a walk. The sky above her was beginning to lighten, so she checked her watch- four in the morning. She’d been running longer than she thought- hadn’t Sophie gone to bed around one? She must have lost track of time. She turned around and started to jog back to the dormitory. Perhaps she could sleep for a few hours before going back to work.

* * * *

_Dear stupid little brother. Having fun? Probably. While you’re hanging out in South America, I’m getting actual work done. Try it sometime. Say hi to mom and dad for me._

_Oh, and by the way, remember Hanna? Turns out she’s here now! None the worse for wear (no thanks to you.) I’ll be sure to say hi._

Sophie leaned back in her chair and stared at the computer screen in front of her. It had been about three months since she’d spoken with her parents or brother face-to-face- they were backpacking in South America- so she’d been keeping in touch by e-mail. So how exactly did one go about saying “I’ve met up with that odd girl from our camping trip when I was fifteen who may or may not be wanted by the government” in an e-mail? Perhaps she should put it in a postscript.

When she’d found out that Miles had told the agents where Hanna had gone, she’d flown into a rage so prolonged that her parents had bypassed scolding her because- according to them- she was expressing her trauma from having been interrogated. Sophie was pretty sure it was code for “she’s snapped,” but to be perfectly fair, she hadn’t given them much of an impression to the contrary. After she was done shouting at Miles, she’d curled up in the back of the van and refused to talk to anyone for days. They’d driven across Europe in silence, occasionally punctured by failed attempts at conversation, while she stared out the window hoping for a miraculous flash of blonde hair.

She still hadn’t entirely forgiven him.

With a sigh, she turned back to the computer screen and deleted the postscript before hitting “send.” Hanna was a topic she didn’t need to bring up with Miles. It would only end in tears.

Instead, she opened another e-mail document, and typed her mother’s address into the “sender” bar. Then she stared at the blank screen and blinking cursor for a few minutes.

_Dear Mom. How are you? I’m fine._

_Dear Mom. School is going well. How’s Bolivia this time of year?_

_Dear Mom. Still no idea what I want to do with my life. Still thinking uni was a mistake. Can I come home and live in the guest room? I promise I’ll pay rent._

With a sigh, Sophie leaned back from her computer chair and glanced out the window. Out on the grass, some upperclassmen were tossing a Frisbee back and forth while others lounged on picnic blankets. They had a stereo set up, and some of the notes drifted gently up to her window- something by Radiohead- along with the pollen-drenched spring air. She sneezed.

“Bless you.”

Sophie spun around. Hanna was sitting up in bed, already regarding her with that unnerving calm, head cocked slightly to one side. She seemed to notice Sophie’s startled expression, because she said “Was that not right?” Her expression didn’t change, but there was a slight crack in her voice.

Sophie tried to scrub a last bit of sleep out of her eye. “No, it’s fine. Just- don’t  _startle_  me like that, okay? I didn’t even know you were up.”

“I’m sorry.” she said. “I didn’t sleep much last night. I didn’t mean to get up this late.”

Sophie snorted. “Welcome to university.”

A tremulous smile touched Hanna’s lips, and Sophie found herself smiling back. There was a lightness to the moment, the shared expressions and little jokes that she hadn’t experienced in a long time- a lack of expectations, almost. Like Hanna didn’t care what she said or how she said it. She felt a sudden burning at the back of her eyes, and was surprised to find that there were tears there.

“Is something wrong?” Hanna asked.

Sophie shook her head with a sniff. “Nothing, it’s stupid. PMS.” At Hanna’s confused look, she added “Never mind.”

Hanna nodded, and sat in contemplative silence for a moment. When she asked “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Sophie, in the midst of taking a deep breath, nearly choked on a mouthful of air. “Do I  _what_?”

“Have a boyfriend.” Off Sophie’s bewildered look, Hanna elaborated, “You said your friend Fred had a boyfriend. Do you have one as well?”

 _What the **hell**  would make you ask that? _Christ, as if Lisa wasn’t enough. Now she had two friends breathing down her neck about her love life. “No.” she said shortly, “I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Why-” Jesus, wasn’t just saying “no” enough anymore? Next thing she knew, she’d be giving a detailed history lesson on her failure of a love life, up to and including having not actually having been interested in a boy since she was sixteen, like some great big l-

And there was  _that word_  again.

“Because I don’t want to.” she said shortly. There was something like hurt on Hanna’s face, and her forehead was creased with worry. Oh, wonderful. Now she had to feel  _guilty_  about not wanting to talk about her car crash of a love life, in addition to having to explain it in the first place to her bizarre friend who had dropped out of nowhere to bring all of this up  _again_ when it didn’t need bringing up because Lisa had done the same thing two days ago. It was like playing bloody whack-a-mole with her own increasingly unstable sexuality.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Then the quiet was broken with the ringing of Sophie’s cell, and she reached over to pick it up, carefully avoiding Hanna’s eyes. “What’s up?”

“It’s me,” Fred’s voice crackled from the other end of the line. “I think I may have found something.”

* * * *

“I don’t know what the hell you guys have gotten yourselves into,” he greeted them as they walked into the computer lab, “but whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.”

“Good morning to you too.” Sophie said dryly, dropping into the chair next to him. Hanna, still silent, sat down behind her. “What did you find?”

Fred spun back to the computer screen, and pulled up a tab. “I haven’t cracked the numbers yet, but, I did track down this Jankovic guy. Turns out he works in London-”

“Yeah, we kind of knew that already.”

Fred threw her a look over his shoulder. “Well someone took her concentrated bitch pills this morning, Hold on. I’m not done. He works for this company called Reinhild-  _not_  easy to find, by the way- and from the looks of it, they’re some sort of military contractors. They’ve got an office in London, but they mainly seem to operate out of Berlin. Hence the German name.” He grinned smugly. “Want to know what it means?”

“Not especially.”

“Well it’s Germanic, obviously. Means ‘battle advisor’ in whatever weird ancient Slavic language. I couldn’t quite crack open what it is they do for the military- that part of their website’s locked up tight- but given what they’re calling themselves, I can hazard a guess. Especially-” he pulled up another tab- in light of this.”

Sophie peered closer at the screen. “What is it?”

“Some lefty newspaper. Like Mother Jones, but even more so. A few years back, they did this big expose on Blackwater- you know, that American contractor company?- and in the middle of the article, I happened upon this part here.” He tapped a few keys, and a section of the text lit up in yellow.

Sophie leaned forward, peering at the screen. She could feel Hanna leaning close behind her, close enough that her breath was ghosting over her ear, and struggled not to shiver.

Hanna read out loud, “The company also has roots in other countries, spread as far as China and Germany. The Reinhild Corporation, with connections in Paris and Copenhagen, has many varied ties to Blackwater, including a shared contract with the Sudanese government. “ She sat back on her heels. “What does that mean? What does Blackwater do?”

“They’re like an army,” Sophie said slowly, remembering the lessons she’d been given in her ninth year social studies class. “Only they don’t belong to the government- they’re just hired by them for whatever they need. They’re-”

“Social security,” Fred said, drawing quotes around the words with his fingers. “Mercenaries, basically. They do whatever their bosses tell them, and since they’re not official, they can duck regulations. There was a big fuss about it during the Iraq war- people finally woke up and realized how fucked up the whole thing was.” He snorted. “Doesn’t seem to have slowed them down anyway.”

For the first time since their argument, Sophie looked over at Hanna and held her gaze. “So- if they’re military-”

Hanna nodded. Neither of them said a thing out loud, but their thoughts were the same: mercenaries in a container park, and a drawling American with a gun and a too-polished smile.

“They’re after me.”

Fred’s head whipped around. “ _What_?”

Both girls ignored him. Sophie’s focus was all on Hanna. “What do they want with you?”

“That paper I showed you.” Hanna took a deep breath. “Not this one, the one from before. The one that said I was abnormal.” There was that wobble in her voice again. “That’s why they want me. They think I can do something for them.”

“Hello?” Fred shouted in the background. “Third person in the room? Hasn’t had any of this explained to him? Very confused? Anyone mind telling me what the  _hell_  you two are mixed up in?”

Slowly, Sophie shifted her gaze from Hanna to Fred. “I think you’re better off staying confused.”

“The hell I am! And even if I was, it’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?” He crossed his arms. “I’ve been pulled into this mess now, so you can’t just take off and not explain. I want answers.”

“Just because you Googled some stuff-”

“No, he’s right.” Hanna interrupted. Both Sophie and Fred turned to face her, startled. She leaned forward, hands on her knees. She addressed Fred, “If I tell you, will you help me?”

Fred looked between the two, and blew out a heavy sigh. “Doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice.”

Hanna nodded. “You should sit down. It’ll take some time to explain.”

* * * *

“ _Shit_.” Fred said.

Sophie was inclined to agree.

“So-” he continued, “you’re saying that some kind of shady government organization bred you to be a super-soldier, killed your mum and dad, and now they’re looking for you? And they may or may not be connected to these Blackwater/Reinhild people, one of who was a crazy lady from Texas with a gun who  _you shot in the head_?”

“Yes.” Hanna said simply.

Fred leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. “Shit,” he said again.

“No kidding,” said Sophie. She looked over at Hanna. “So what do you want to do?”

The other girl shook her head slowly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think the next step is to find out what the numbers mean. They could lead us to Reinhild.”

Sophie bit her lip. “We know where Reinhild is, though. We could hop on a train to London and find them any time. The question is whether or not we  _do_.”

“Actually, I think Hanna’s right,” Fred said, sticking the end of his pen back into his mouth. “We have the numbers, but we don’t know what they mean yet. We have this Jankovic guy’s name- and his address, by the way- but we don’t know what he does.”

“Works for Reinhild, obviously-”

“Or maybe not. Maybe he’s someone on the outside. Maybe he’s another super-soldier-”

“I’m not a soldier.” Hanna said quietly. There was an ache in her voice that made Sophie’s chest tighten. She reached out and took Hanna’s hand in hers, giving it a small squeeze. Hanna didn’t squeeze back, but her grip was warm and solid.

“Right,” Fred said slowly, glancing between the two of them. Sophie fought the sudden urge to tug her hand away. “So he could be another-  _genetic modification_ \- and maybe they’re after him as well as you? Or maybe he’s a spy, like that American woman.”

“She wasn’t a spy,” Hanna corrected him, “she was a field agent.”

“ _Whatever_.” Fred said, with a slight roll of his eyes. Sophie kicked him under the desk. “As I was saying, we don’t know who he is or how he’s involved, or what the numbers mean. So I say we stay put for now.”

“ _We_?” Sophie raised an eyebrow.

Fred waved a hand in front of him dismissively. “Not saying I’m going anywhere when you do go after them. I’m staying  _right_  here. I’ll run the whole operation through the computer. The Charlie to your Angels. But I’m not storming any evil corporations. I’m not the genetically modified super-soldier here.”

Hanna’s face twitched, and Sophie found herself wanting to slap Fred. Instead, she stood up quickly. “We should go.”

Fred sighed, and rolled the chair back towards his desk. “If you want. Oh, but Sophie-” she half-turned on her way towards the door- “can you hang back for a mo’? I wanted to ask you something.”

Hanna hesitated at the door, but Sophie nodded to her. “Go ahead. I’ll catch you up.”

She took a seat in the chair across from Fred, who gave her a long, level look. She shifted uncomfortably. “What?”

His eyes narrowed. “Do you have a thing for her?”

 _Oh god._  “Why is everyone so interested in who I have a thing for all of a sudden? It’s none of your business anyway. And I’m not gay.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t say you were.”

“Well, good.” She could feel a hot flush creeping up the back of her neck, unpleasantly different from the one she’d experienced while chatting with Hanna earlier that morning. “Because I’m  _not_. So why would you think I’ve got a thing for her?”

“Oh,  _I_  don’t know.” Fred rolled his eyes and pitched his voice up a few octaves. “’What do you want to do, Hanna? You’re not a soldier, Hanna! Here Hanna, let me hold your hand and glare at Fred for you, but in a purely platonic way, obviously, because it’s not like I  _like_  you or anything.’” He dropped his voice back to normal and gave her a look. “Well?”

“You’re an idiot.” Sophie said shortly. “And stop saying ‘like.’ We’re not in secondary school anymore.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I already gave you an answer-”

“No,” he corrected, “you said you’re not gay. That’s not the same thing.”

Sophie said nothing.

Fred leaned forward in the chair, and put both hands on his knees. His voice was gentler when he spoke again, which pushed Sophie dangerously close to cracking. “Look, Soph, I get it. It’s hard. I’ve been there. Your head’s all messed up and you don’t know what’s up or what’s down any more, and the only thing that makes sense is the one thing that’s making you confused. Believe me, I know. But denial’s not gonna help. And it’s not going to make it go away.”

Sophie scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. The skin came away hot with tears. “So what am I supposed to do?”

Fred’s face was grave. “I don’t know. Talk to her, I guess. Because if this spy shit is really going to go down? I’m thinking you’ll want to have it out sooner rather than later.”

 

* * * *

She’d known it would happen sooner or later. She just hadn’t expected it to be now.

 

Back in Sophie’s room, Hanna turned a knife over and over in her hands. It was just a butter knife; nothing she could do real harm with. She hadn’t had a real knife in a while. She tried running the blade of this one across her thumb, just to see what would happen, but it came away without making more than a faint impression on her skin. No blood.

She needed blood.

But she didn’t  _want_  blood. It was the one thing her father’s years of tutelage had failed to impress on her; the desire to draw blood, cause pain. She could kill if she wanted to- she  _had_  killed, pointed a gun at Marissa Wiegler’s head and pulled the trigger, heard the gun’s report, seen blood and brains spread across the train tracks like spilled pudding. She could aim a gun without her hand shaking, pull the trigger without fear.

She just didn’t want to.

While she’d stayed in Berlin, she’d seen some movies- old film reels in the library, movie night at the homeless shelter. There was death in those films too, men and women (usually men- was she the odd one out, then?) who pulled guns and knives on their enemies and sent their innards flying towards the audience while music soared. That hadn’t made her feel anything. Should it have? There were bodies and cheers and cries of victory, but it was all so empty. Empty eyes, empty songs, empty causes. No victory for her.

_She didn’t want to kill._

There was a childish part of her that wanted to rail against the unfairness of it. Why did she have to do this? Why couldn’t she just stay here with Sophie and let Reinhild do what they would? She hadn’t chosen to be their product. She hadn’t decided to be given this information. Why couldn’t she just hand it off to someone who  _did_  crave the chase and the blood and go on with her own life?

Back in Berlin, she’d gone to her grandmother’s flat more times than she could count. Perhaps she should have gone to the police while they were there removing the body, but what good would it have done? They would have asked her questions about her mother and father, if she’d seen anyone going into the building. What could she have told them? So instead, she’d hidden until they were gone, leaving the yellow tape fluttering in the breeze from the open window, and then ducked under it. Her grandmother was gone, but her belongings were still there; perhaps they would tell her something that her father had not.

She hadn’t found much. The flat was scrubbed and polished clean, every surface shining dully in the mid-afternoon light. Some of the drawers hung open and empty; perhaps the police had taken things with them. In the bedroom, there had been pictures lined up on the dresser; some of men and women she didn’t recognize (aunts and uncles?) and one that sat slightly off-centre from the rest, resting in a clear glass frame, lovingly dusted and carefully labelled  _Johanna_.

She’d taken it with her. Not to keep- it felt wrong to keep it, somehow- but to study as she sat on her bed in the shelter and traced her fingertips over the face in the photo. It was a bit like her, she thought- same hair. Similar eyes. She tried calling her  _Mama_ , tongue stumbling over the unfamiliar word. This was the woman who’d given her that book of fairy tales. Maybe she’d read it to her when she was small; Hanna couldn’t remember. After a careful study, she’d returned the photo to its place of honour on the dresser, and left the flat for the last time. The one time she’d gone back, there were men and women in black clustered around outside, and so she’d left.She wished she’d managed to bring her old photos or the fairy tale book from the cabin, but it wasn’t to be. She wondered what had happened to the cabin. Probably the men who’d come to get her had burned it down.

So much destruction. It made her so tired. Did everything always have to be like this? Why couldn’t she build something instead of tearing it down? She was tired of tearing things down. She was tired of everything ending in a storm of blood and gunfire, when all that was left afterwards was her and a pile of corpses. Sophie was alive; Sophie’s friends were alive; they breathed, they were vital and awake and  _happy_. She wanted that for a change. She wanted to sit on Sophie’s bed and chatter and laugh with her. She wanted to hold Sophie’s hand again, and feel warm and safe. She wanted to kiss her again and be happy because she was building something new and beautiful, and the only thing being destroyed was the ugliness she had lived with, swept away to make the world big and shining and bright instead of the dark, cramped little space she’d been living in her whole life.

But then there was her mother’s picture, and the blood on the floor of the flat, and the paper that had propelled her to England. Her mother hadn’t chosen to be a soldier either, and now she was dead. Her father had- and he was dead, too. Was that the choice? Death at both ends; but her father had lived a little bit longer. And what did she owe her mother? Would Reinhild mould more soldiers from unwilling clay if she didn’t go to London and stop them? Did this mission  _have_  to be hers?

The thoughts made her head hurt. With the knife still in her hand, she lay down on the bed, knees curled up under her chin. The questions would still be there when she woke, but at least she could put them off for a little while.

* * * *

Sophie took the long route back to the dorm, zigzagging across campus to make the walk last even longer. She walked with her hands in her pockets, hunched over despite the relative warmth of the spring day. All around her, people were walking in clusters, laughing, chatting, some singing loudly and off-key to the music from their iPods. Some of the were in couples, hands dangling entwined at the wrist, or kissing with loud moist noises that somehow managed to reach her across the walkway. Maybe being suddenly maybe-possibly-gay gave her superhearing. Or she was imagining things.

She fumbled with her keys as she drew level with the dormitory, and had to pick them up before she finally managed to slide them into the lock and turn it. The hallway was, at least deserted. That was a blessing. She wasn’t really up to making small talk with anyone. To make sure she wouldn’t bump into anyone on the way up, she stepped into the lift and jabbed the button that would take her to the third floor, where her room- and hopefully Hanna- would greet her when she stepped out of the lift.

As the walls dropped away around her, the drop in her stomach not entirely attributable to the shift in altitude, she began mentally rehearsing what she’d say when she reached her destination.  _So hey, remember that talk we had this morn_ \- had it really been that short a time?-  _earlier? About me having a boyfriend? Turns out the reason I don’t is because I kind of have a thing for you, as Fred was kind enough to point out, so could we maybe go out? Sometime? When we’re not busy fighting evil military complexes and possibly overturning governments- well maybe not that, but I don’t think we’ll be making any friends with this. So what do you think?_

When had her life turned into some twisted version of a romantic comedy?

The lift shuddered to a stop, sending her stomach lurching with it. When she stepped out, she leaned against a wall for a moment- it wouldn’t do much good to vomit all over Hanna while she was trying to make her grand speech- before she proceeded down the hall. When she reached her room, she paused outside the door for a moment, taking a deep breath, and went in.

The room was dark, the blinds drawn, and it took her a moment to adjust to the lack of lighting. Hanna was curled up on the spare bed, one hand curled around a butter knife, the other tucked under her head. She was perfectly still and quiet, as though she was on the alert even with her eyes closed. She appeared to be asleep.

Well.  _That_  was anti-climactic.

She let out a long, shuddery breath, pleased that her stomach seemed to have settled into something resembling calm. Slowly- she didn’t want to startle the other girl- she walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. Gently, she reached over and took the knife from Hanna’s hands. Her fingers slid limply away from the handle, and were left dangling out into the space between the bed and the table. Sophie set it down on the nightstand and put a hand on the other girl’s shoulder. “Hanna?”

She stirred with a soft snuffling sound, blinking several times. “What time is it?” She looked over at the alarm clock.

“It’s two-thirty.” Sophie said. “Did you sleep  _at all_  last night?” She’d known the other girl had gone out jogging, but she hadn’t realized that she’d be exhausted enough to be napping right after lunch. Selfishly, she wondered if perhaps she should put the conversation off until later. If Hanna was tired, it clearly wasn’t a good time-

“No,” Hanna said slowly, “I don’t need to sleep. I was just . . . tired.” The contradiction in the words didn’t appear to bother her. She met Sophie’s gaze. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

 _If you only knew._  “No,” Sophie lied through her teeth, “nothing’s . . . wrong, exactly.” Her eyes drifted to the butter knife still sitting on the nightstand. “Are you okay?”

Hanna’s eyes lowered to the floor, but not before Sophie caught a glimpse of something aching and wanting in them. She swallowed hard. It was okay; Hanna still wasn’t looking at her. She could waver for a few moments.

“I’m not a soldier.” Hanna said. She looked back up, and there was that look again- pained and fevered like a trapped animal in a cage, only one that could see someone coming to release it. “I’m  _not_.” Her voice wavered slightly.

“Of course you’re not.” Sophie soothed, reaching a hand out to lay on her arm. Her fingers met string, and she glanced down- of course. The bracelet. In all the turmoil, she’d almost managed to forget about it. Gently, she rubbed at the skin underneath it with her thumb. “You’re my friend, remember?”

Hanna raised her head slowly, on a long exhale of air. Her other hand came up to intercept Sophie’s, and they lay together on the bracelet. Hanna’s fingers were resting on top of hers’, and Sophie found suddenly that she couldn’t breathe. The world had narrowed into the point where skin brushed skin, and things like breath and speech and thought had disappeared from her line of vision. There was only Hanna’s hand, Hanna’s face, Hanna’s voice trembling on the edge of tears but raggedly brave. Hanna was always brave. Hanna had kissed her two years earlier and set them down this pathway that stopped here, now, sitting on her bed, when she wanted nothing more than to kiss her again.

So she did.

She’d never kissed another girl, excepting that once in the caravan, but it wasn’t- in the most technical terms- different from kissing a boy. Lips were lips no matter who they belonged to, and the warm breath that puffed against her face was the same as it would have been with anyone else. There was no beard or moustache to scratch at her lip, and the other girl’s face was lighter and more delicate than any boy she’d ever kissed, light enough that it felt almost violent to bring her hands up to press against Hanna’s face and feel the blood beating underneath her fingertips.

Hanna wasn’t saying anything, but neither was she pulling away. Was this a mistake? Had she overstepped some invisible line doing this, frightened the other girl away, or betrayed some kind of trust that she hadn’t even realized she’d entered into? Maybe she’d ruined everything in one stupid, reckless act that she’d done without thinking because everything was so huge and towering, and she wanted something small and safe, but if she’d ruined it-

Hanna kissed her back.

Long fingers slid around her neck and into her hair, and the kiss deepened as Hanna’s mouth pushed back against hers and sent sparks wheeling across the sky that was her closed eyelids and set a fire burning in her chest- not the light flush that had crept up the back of her neck earlier, but something low and hot and fierce that demanded more fuel,  _more, more **now**. _ So she pressed closer, feeling the other girl’s breasts pressed against hers’- that was new and different, and made the breath stick in the back of her throat.That drive for more was still pushing her on, so she leaned back for a moment to pull her shirt over her head- thank god she’d put on a t-shirt that morning instead of something that required unbuttoning a thousand buttons- breaking the kiss long enough to see the look on Hanna’s face. There was something soft in it, and pure and light, like she’d never seen before.

She blinked. “Is- are you okay?”

Hanna gently brought a hand up against her face, pushing aside a hank of hair that had fallen into Sophie’s eyes. “I’m happy ,” she said simply.

Sophie dropped the shirt, leaving it half-hanging off one shoulder. She looked ridiculous, but she didn’t care. “Oh.” she said.

Hanna nodded, smiling, and reached down to take Sophie’s hand. “Are you? Happy?”

It took Sophie a moment to answer; her head was going in dizzy circles, like she’d just gone around a merry-go-round several times in a row. Gently, she untangled her fingers, and brought Hanna’s hand up to her mouth, gently pressing her lips against her knuckles. “Yes.”

Hanna took her finger away. “And you  _want_  this?” She ran a hand down Sophie’s neck, skimming the strap of her bra. Sophie shivered. “ _Yes_.”

The other girl swallowed hard. “Are we in this together now?”  _This_  could mean so many things.

“I promise.” This was important, she knew; she had promised once before, but she’d broken it. She needed to be honest this time. “I won’t leave you.”

Hanna stared at her for a long moment, and Sophie was afraid, again, that she’d done something wrong. Instead, the other girl took hold of the edge of her shirt and stripped it off in one fluid motion. Sophie took the opportunity to lean forward and kiss her again, and Hanna reciprocated, opening her mouth against Sophie’s. Sophie mirrored the action eagerly, but held back from putting her tongue out just yet. She wasn’t sure just what Hanna did or didn’t know about how these things worked, and having the other girl accidentally bite down on her tongue would be a less-than-romantic end to the encounter. But Hanna didn’t seem to need prompting- her hands were already on Sophie’s shoulders, pushing her backwards onto the bed. Sophie tilted back accommodatingly, keeping both hands on Hanna’s waist so as not to lose contact with the other girl- hands on bare skin. She could feel muscles shifting under her fingers, and felt a pang remembering looking at herself in the mirror, scowling at the round folds of skin at her waist. She’d thought she looked disgusting; but Hanna didn’t seem to mind, as she was gently kissing the spot just above her navel. Sophie shivered.

“Do you . . .” she said awkwardly, sitting up. Hanna crawled backwards to sit on her legs, looking at her expectantly. “Do you know what to do? I mean . . .” Sophie had an idea of what women did in bed together, but it was a vague, half-formed one cobbled together from movies, television, and fits of Googling when she’d been able to scrape up the courage to do so. None of these sources taught her much, and she still wasn’t sure that anything she’d learned was accurate. They hadn’t exactly seemed designed for her anyway, and the lack of certainty left her feeling suddenly nervous at the prospect of trying to put it into practice. Not that she hadn’t been nervous before.

Hanna, on the other hand, didn’t look nervous at all. She put a hand to her mouth, considering, and just watching her fingers tracing over her lips made Sophie’s stomach clench in something very unlike nervousness. She felt like a secondary-schooler all over again, full to bursting with  _want_ , without any idea of what to do with it.

“I could help you.” Hanna said.

Sophie had no idea whatsoever what “help” entailed, but she trusted the other girl- hell, if she didn’t, they’d never have gotten this far- and so she nodded and lay back on the bed, trying to regulate the rise and fall of her chest so that she didn’t look quite so much like a panting dog.

Hanna lay down on top of her, with one elbow braced against the mattress to keep her from dropping her full weight, and kissed her again. This kiss was different- the previous ones had been so frantic with immediate need, they hadn’t paused to fully enjoy them. This one was slow and sensuous, with the other girl’s tongue fully in her mouth, moisture gathering on her lips as they pushed against each other’s touch. One of Hanna’s legs was lying between her own, and even that slight pressure made her shudder. Her hands were restless without anything to touch, so she dropped them to the other girl’s chest, touching her breasts properly for the first time- smaller than hers’, but still round, with nipples that grew hard between her fingers. Tentatively, she tried rubbing one, which earned her a pleased-sounding groan. She tried it again, harder, and judging from the sudden pressure of Hanna’s hand digging into her hip, she was succeeding in  _something_. So she slid her hand further down, towards the waistband of the other girl’s trousers.

Hanna gently pushed her hand away. “Wait,” she said, “I was going to help you, remember?”

Sophie blinked. “You did help.” She never would have thought to try that on her own; when they were kissing, it seemed as if some sort of instinctual reflexes had taken over, putting her hands where they needed to be and directing her mouth to do what it did.

But Hanna was shaking her head. “I’m not done yet.”

She started to kiss her way down Sophie’s neck, and then her torso, stopping to worry at one of her nipples with her teeth- Sophie’s hand inadvertently clenched in the sheets when that happened- and down over her navel, to the edge of her jeans. She unbuttoned them quickly enough, but just watching her do it made Sophie feel a bit lightheaded- she had never noticed Hanna’s hands like that before, how deft they were. There were a lot of things about Hanna she hadn’t noticed before. Or maybe she had, and she’d just refused to recognize it.

Hanna tugged at the waistband of her underwear, and Sophie obligingly lifted her hips and wiggled to make them come off quicker. The sudden shock of air made gooseflesh rise on her skin, but the greater shock was the sudden pressure of Hanna’s tongue between her legs, and Sophie couldn’t help but cry out at the sensation. The other girl was giving her slow, agonizing strokes, and Sophie was squirming into the mattress, trying desperately not to yell again, for fear of having someone bang on the wall to shut them up. The sensations were making her shudder all over, but something in them- a hesitancy, an almost-bashfulness- told her that Hanna hadn’t done this before, and that made a different, lighter sensation rise in her chest. She could feel sweat beading on her forehead, even though she really wasn’t exerting herself all that much, and something was building in the pit of her stomach- a sort of pressure that she wasn’t quite sure how to define, although she had an idea of what would happen when it peaked. Then Hanna nudged at her clit with her tongue once, twice, and she came with another yell, crushing the sheets into a ball in her fist, panting out the sensation of release as Hanna- Hanna looked at her like a revelation was unfolding right in front of her, and Sophie instinctively reached down to pull the other girl up for another lingering kiss. There was a sharp, salty taste to her mouth, and it took Sophie a moment to realize that that was  _her._

Hanna rested her chin on her chest. “Did I-“ She broke off with a shy smile. “Did you like it?”

Sophie laughed, and before her reaction could be misconstrued, ducked down to kiss her again. Both of them came up smiling. “Yeah,” Sophie said, “yeah I did.” Part of her was silently berating herself for having waited this long to act on it, as if any of the girls she’d gazed at out of the corner of her eye couldn’t have granted her this years earlier; but looking down at Hanna’s happily flushed face, she thought that really, she preferred it this way. The other girls might have been able to make her feel this good, might have known any number of tricks and techniques that would have left her howling loudly enough to get her kicked out of the dorm altogether- but they wouldn’t have been  _Hanna_.

A thought occurred to her, and she nudged against the other girl until they rolled over, with Sophie now on top. Hanna was still smiling, but now she looked slightly confused. “What-?”

Sophie put a finger to her lips, and the other girl fell silent. She slid a hand down Hanna’s stomach- the top button of her trousers was still undone, but they weren’t off. That was fine. She could do what she wanted without them being properly removed, which was slide her hand inside the trousers and brush her fingers against Hanna’s clit. She was already wet- Sophie felt slightly guilty for letting her own needs be attended to first- and she gasped at the contact. Encouraged, Sophie continued to stroke, drawing tiny circles with her fingertips and pinching with her knuckles until she felt she’d lingered long enough, and pushed a finger inside her. She was rewarded with a gasp; encouraged, she experimented with pushing it in different directions, listening for the changes in Hanna’s breathing as she did so. The response made her shiver a little, a new feeling spreading in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t put a name to it, exactly, but she might compare it to pride. She crooked her finger up, and pressed it against a new spot; the resulting intake of breath told her everything she needed to know. She kept rubbing at it with her fingertip, sometimes pushing down with her knuckle, until Hanna clenched around her and let out a long, slow breath that let her know that she was done.

Sophie crawled up next to the other girl, and flopped back onto the pillow, tucking one arm over Hanna’s waist. She felt suddenly sleepy- not in her usual, dead-to-the-world sort of way, but a contentment sprung from knowing that Hanna was lying next to her, would be when she woke up, and she no longer had to fret to herself about what she should do about her inconvenient feelings. There was still Reinhild to deal with, and David Jankovic, and the unknown numbers on Hanna’s piece of paper; but for a few hours, all they really needed to do was curl up next to each other and sleep. She closed her eyes.

* * * *

Hanna woke when it was barely light out, with beams of weak sunlight spilling through the blinds and over the bed. She carefully extricated herself from Sophie’s arm- no need to wake the other girl up- and padded silently over to the window. Outside, she could see students starting to stir; a few were making their way across campus, drooping under heavy backpacks and trying to smother yawns with their hands. They were the unfortunate ones who had early morning classes; Hanna could sleep in, if she wanted to.

She propped her elbows on the window sill and rested her chin on her hands. Yesterday afternoon, before Sophie had arrived, she’d wanted to abandon the mission she’d been given entirely- vanish somewhere into the heart of the campus, take up classes, be given a certificate stamped with her name and accomplishments and walk along in the footsteps of those students walking across the courtyard in front of her eyes. Perhaps her mother would have wanted that for her. Not for the first time, she wondered if her mother had gone to school, what she might have studied, if she had dreamed of seeing her own daughter graduate. She couldn’t know. She wished she could. For years and years she’d done what was expected of her; what was she supposed to do when nobody expected anything?

Sophie stirred in bed behind her, and Hanna glanced over her shoulder, but the other girl merely rolled over onto her side and went back to sleep. Smiling, Hanna went to sit on the edge of the bed. Nobody had expected her to love Sophie, but she did. Nobody had expected her to come here- but she had. Really, who would expect her to go to London? Nobody, save Sophie, Fred, and Lisa, even knew who she was, and only Sophie and Fred knew the truth of it. It was all up to her. She sat in silence, turning the thoughts over in her mind, absently carding her fingers through Sophie’s hair.

As the sun rose and spilled through the window, Sophie lifted her head, yawning and rubbing at her eyes. “’Morning.” She sat up, then seemed to belatedly realize that she didn’t have a shirt on, and shyly lifted the blanket to her shoulders. “What’s on for today?”

Hanna looked to the window. “I’m going to London.”

* * * *

They took the nine-thirty train out of Norwich Station, a still-sleepy Sophie dozing against the window with her eyes hanging half-closed. Hanna, for her part, propped her elbows up on the windowsill and watched the countryside go by. She didn’t seem to need to sleep as much as Sophie did. Maybe that was part of her abnormality. Or maybe she just didn’t need sleep. She watched the view from the window bleed from greenery into industrial grey, and then into a series of billboards and bright lights that made spots dance on the insides of her eyelids whenever she closed them. The train went on rumbling peacefully underneath her.

Sophie woke up just before they stopped at Liverpool Street, smiling a little shyly at her as they disembarked. Once they were out of the station, Hanna blinked in the sudden light. It wasn’t just the daylight in opposition to the relative gloom of the train that startled her, but the omnipresent flashing of billboards, the roar of the surrounding crowds pushing at them as they hurried past- the  _people_. She’d been in cities before, of course, but never one as loud or bright as this. She felt her pulse jump, setting a pounding rhythm against her temple and a churning in her stomach.

“Hey.” She looked to her side. Sophie was there, now fully awake and looking concerned. “You okay?”

She took Sophie’s outstretched hand, and the other girl gave it a squeeze. She glanced back up. The sounds and sights still surrounded her, but they seemed slightly muted now- not by much, just enough to let her tune them out. Sophie’s hand in hers’ felt like an anchor, rooting her to the ground and the earlier silence of their room, and the reason she’d come to London in the first place. The lights and noises wouldn’t hurt her. Reinhild would. And she could deal with them.

“I’m fine,” she said, returning the squeeze. “Let’s go.”

They crossed the street, past the Kindertransport statue- Hanna paused to marvel at the familiar German syllables, though she wasn’t at all familiar with the configuration- and hopped onto a bus. In her hand, Hanna grasped the slip of paper Fred had given them with Jankovic’s address- 179, Avonmore Road- and it had grown slightly damp in her palm, as sweat crept across her skin. Once again, she propped her elbow on the windowsill and her chin on her fist, and watched as London went by. Sophie, sitting next to her, was silent, but her hand rested lightly on Hanna’s, and the warmth of her skin was comforting.

They disembarked at Kensington High Street and walked the rest of the way to Avonmore. The street that Fred’s directions pointed them towards was a quiet one, lined with towering brick houses and neatly kept lawns that stretched out to the road. The house they were directed to was unobtrusive- a red brick building with a small garden blooming beneath the front windows. The lawn was trimmed and empty; all the curtains were drawn.

Hanna stepped up to the front porch, Sophie behind her, and pressed the doorbell. The ringing of the bell was met with silence, which stretched out in the ensuing minute. Sophie turned to go.

“Wait.” Hanna held up a finger to stop her. Inside, her ears could pick up the faint sounds of someone shuffling back and forth. She raised her hand to try the doorbell again when someone spoke through the door. “Who is it?”

“It’s Hanna,” she said, and after a moment’s pause, added “Heller.” How many Hannas did he know?

Another pause. “What do you want?”

She stood on her toes to try and peer through the peephole- it was positioned just above her eye level- but all she could see was a face too blurry to make out. “I want to talk to you about Marissa Wiegler.”

The door was suddenly flung open, and both girls jumped backwards as Jankovic appeared, clutching a revolver tucked under his arm. In the sudden daylight streaming into his eyes, he blinked at them. Evidently they weren’t what he had been expecting. “Jesus Christ, you’re  _kids_.”

“I’m eighteen.” said Sophie, sounding slightly offended. “And so’s she.”

He ignored her, focusing his gaze on Hanna instead. A frown line appeared on his forehead as he took her features in, as though he was trying to remember something. “How do you know Marissa?”

“She tried to kill me.” Hanna said simply.

He snorted. “Well you can’t be that bad, then.” His voice, she noticed, sounded odd- mostly British like Sophie’s, but with faint German inflections on the vowels. “Are you armed?”

Hanna shook her head, and held both empty hands out for inspection. Sophie did the same. He let out a huff of air, and pulled the door open slightly wider. “Come in, then.”

They stepped over the threshold, and Hanna glanced around to see what the inside of the house was like. There was nothing to indicate who he was; the interior was decorated in dark browns and reds, with a carpet rolled down the front hallway and a little dining room to her right. To her left, there was a sitting room, which he ushered them into and unceremoniously sat down in the armchair, after making sure that the curtain was still pulled shut. He gestures to the sofa against the wall. “Go on, have a seat.”

Sophie took him at his word, but Hanna lingered on her feet for a moment, glancing around the room to examine the framed certificates on the wall. One was from something called the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; another read “Leopoldina Research Prize,” and was framed alongside a picture of Jankovic shaking hands with a man in a dark suit and glasses. Yet another proclaimed him a member of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. There were more, too- more certificates (even one in what looked like Russian) and also pictures of him sitting in conference with other men and women, and some of him shaking hands. She felt as though she’d walked into a house of mirrors.

“Please,” he said, gesturing again, “sit.” She did so, perching on the sofa next to Sophie. The other girl was still staring, wide-eyed at their surroundings; Hanna suspected she hadn’t seen anything like it before either.

Now that he had them both sitting, Jankovic didn’t seem to have any idea what to do with them. He stood back up, pacing back and forth and wringing his hands. “Would- would you like anything? Tea? Coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Hanna said politely. She pulled the wrinkled scrap of paper from her pocket. “I’d like to talk to you about this, please.”

Jankovic fumbled in his pocket for spectacles, then slid them on as he took the paper from Hanna’s hands and brought it close to his face. His lips moved silently as he read it; then his head suddenly snapped up, and he stared at her with something resembling terror. “You- you’re  _that_  Hanna?  _Erik’s_ Hanna? The little girl who-” He cut himself off mid-sentence, gulping like a fish who had suddenly found himself on dry land. Then he straightened, hand going to the revolver that he’d set down on a side table. “You said you weren’t armed?”

“I’m not,” Hanna said.

He let out a shaky laugh, but he didn’t drop the gun. “Not that it would do me much good, eh? I saw what you did to that woman in the compound, you know. They passed the video around.” The revolver was rattling against his leg. “Is that what you’re here for? To kill me?”

“I don’t want to hurt you at all,” Hanna said quietly, feeling irrationally hurt at the assumption. “I only want to ask you questions.”

He stared at her for a moment, then sat down heavily in his armchair. Taking his glasses off, he rubbed the back of one hand against his eyes. “Very well then.” He set the revolver back down on the side table. “What do you want to know?”

She reached forward and pointed to the paper he was still holding. “Who are the animals?”

He smiled, though it was a little strained. “I’d have thought you would figure it out quickly enough. The lamb is you. The wolf is Marissa. Surely Erik read you Aesop’s at some point?”

“I knew that,” she said, a little stiffly. “What about the rooster?”

He let out an odd bark of laughter. “That? Oh, that’s  _me_.”

Hanna and Sophie exchanged looks, and Jankovic stood abruptly. “Hold on, let me fetch something.“ He left the room at a trot, and Hanna wondered if he was still afraid she’d snap his neck.

“ _Weird_.” said Sophie.

Hanna had to agree. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, going to see him- another Marissa perhaps- but it hadn’t been this odd, twitchy man who couldn’t seem to sit still for more than a minute at a time. Perhaps he was like those shaking men and women she’d seen on the streets in Berlin, the ones who gave themselves needles. Or maybe it was just her presence that made him so uncomfortable.

Before she had the chance to ponder it further, she heard footsteps tapping down the hallways, and he re-appeared in the doorway with a bulging briefcase under his arm. He dropped it onto the table, sending papers sliding out onto the polished wood surface and the carpet beneath him, and leafed through them, muttering under his breath, before finally pulling one free and thrusting it at Hanna. “Here. Read this.”

Hanna took it in her hand, and turned it around so that she could read the writing. Half the page was blacked out, but what she could read seemed to be some sort of letter or memo.

To Field Agents Allard, Hayashi, Seaver, et all

Be advised that Agent Jankovic, classified Rooster, has broken with the organization, and is henceforth known as a liability that requires termination. Agents encountering Rooster are advised DNE. A team has been dispatched for disestablish procedure. Rooster’s security clearance has been revoked.

Regards,

Department Head Dubicki

 

“I don’t understand” Hanna said, handing it back.

Jankovic sighed impatiently. “That’s because it’s been censored.”

“If it’s been censored, why would you expect her to read it?” Sophie asked.

Jankovic ignored her. “Rooster is my classification name since I severed ties with them- the one crowing the dawn, see?” He let out another odd, barky laugh. “It’s the standard code name for people who pose a threat to security. When someone pulls out for ethical reasons, they’re assigned that classification automatically. They can never tell if we’re going to go to the press or not.”

“Then what does DNE mean?” Hanna asked. She had a niggling feeling that she knew the answer already.

“Means ‘do not engage.’” He took a glass of water from the side table and drained what was left of it. “I’m not to be approached by any agents who happen to pass me on the street or somesuch unless they have a terminate order.”

“But what does ‘disestablish-’” Sophie began, then stopped midsentence.

He snorted. “Self-explanatory, no? Unless the state of English education’s taken a steep drop since I was in school.” He set the water glass down with a thump. “Means ‘terminate.’ End. Put down. They’re not taking any chances with me, it seems. Not when I’ve got the information I do.”

“Which is?”

He stared at Hanna for a moment as though he’s forgotten she was still in the room, then shook his head. “The paper. Right.” He held it up again. “What else do you want to know?”

“What the numbers mean.” She paused. “And- and information about my mother. If you have it.”

Sophie’s fingers crept over hers and she rubbed a thumb over Hanna’s knuckles. Hanna didn’t take her eyes from Jankovic, but she squeezed her fingers slightly to let the other girl know she’d noticed.

Jankovic tossed the paper down on the table, and went back to rummaging through the mess of files that he’d dropped earlier. Eventually, he pulled out several stapled-together papers, and flourished them. “Here you go. This was the file that we kept on your mother before the project was terminated. I salvaged it when I left.”

Hanna took the papers and scanned them. A familiar face greeted her, pinned to the top of the sheaf; one she had never seen (or rather, couldn’t remember seeing) in life, but one she had looked at almost every day, in the set of photos she used to mark her place in the book of fairy stories. The text under it was printed in typewriter font, and read:

 

JOHANNA ZADEK

1976-1998

Classification:  ~~Active~~  Terminated

Originator: 5196749000

She turned the page. At the top of the next paper was another picture- a peach-faced baby wrapped in a sterile white blanket, with a tagged bracelet wrapped around its left wrist. Hanna squinted at the bracelet. It said the same as the previous page-  _5196749000._

There was more beneath it, but Hanna wasn’t paying attention. Her mouth moved as she sounded out the number designation again. Then she looked back up at Jankovic. “Is that- me?” she asked. “The numbers? They mean me?”

He nodded. “They gave classification numbers to all the children born in Project Solidus, to keep anyone from getting too attached.”

“But my name is Hanna,” she said.

“I know.” He sighed deeply. “Your mother insisted on naming you, and Erik encouraged her. That probably should have been our first warning sign that something would go wrong.”

Hanna set the papers back down on the table. “Tell me about the project.”

Jankovic stood and walked over to the window, peering through the tiny crack in the curtains before returning to the armchair and running a hand over his scalp. “How much do you know already?”

“I know I was meant to be a soldier.” Hanna said softly. “I know they recruited pregnant women to be test subjects. I want to know where you found my mother. Why you killed her. And who my father is.”

He blinked at her. “I’ve no idea who he is. I doubt anyone else did either. I was a research scientist- I worked with the test subjects to see what change I could affect. Some of them volunteered genetic information about their children’s fathers, but your mother never did. It wasn’t of much concern.” He picked up the glass again, remembered it was empty, and tossed it aside with a disgruntled snort. “When the project was shut down, we had to terminate every civilian who was connected to it, to make sure they wouldn’t speak out. Some were silenced with a contract and a payoff. But Johanna wanted to keep you.”

“So she ran,” Hanna finished for him.

He nodded. “We had no idea Erik was planning to help her until all three of you vanished and his apartment was searched. We knew at that point that all three of you needed to be-“ He paused, apparently realizing what he was about to say.

“Killed,” Sophie said. Her voice was shaking on the verge of shouting.

He nodded unhappily. “Understand, I didn’t- I thought it was worth it, what we were doing. I thought the ends would be worth the means.”

“So what made you quit?” Hanna asked.

He rubbed a hand over his face. “Cowardice, I suppose. Fear. I knew you and Erik were after us. I knew there was a chance that everyone else who had worked on the project would be terminated, just to make sure. I didn’t want to take the chance. So I ran.”

“But you took all this with you.” Hanna said. “Why?”

He picked up one of the papers and took a long look at it. “Guilt? Leverage? I’m not sure. I felt that someone should keep it documented. If I’d left it in my office, it would have been destroyed. And I-”

For a moment, Hanna thought he’d cut himself off to gather his thoughts, or just from sheer excess emotion. Then she registered the tiny  _pop_  that came from the direction of the window, and saw a small hole appear in Jankovic’s throat. He opened and closed his mouth several times, as if trying to speak, then slumped forward. A steady stream of blood ran down from the hole onto his shirt, soaking it.

Sophie made a horrified noise.

Without a thought, Hanna grabbed the other girl’s arm and yanked her to the ground, just as the door crashed open. Hanna wasted no time in squirming under the couch, fingers still wrapped around Sophie’s wrists, but not before grabbing whatever files were in reach and shoving them down the front of her shirt.

The sound of footsteps made her freeze in place. Beside her, Sophie was trembling, but Hanna’s hand over her mouth kept her from making a sound, and the skirt of the sofa kept anyone from bending down and catching sight of then. Hanna reached out, ignoring Sophie’s muffled protests, and pushed the skirt up slightly, so that she could see and hear what was going on outside.

“-heard voices.” someone said. By their accent, they sounded British. Another voice scoffed. “Who’d he invite over, the neighbourhood kids?” Two pairs of boots passed by the couch, on the way to the dining room.

“Are we torching the place?” one of the voices asked.

“What are you, stupid? How’re we supposed to explain that to the neighbourhood watch? We’ll scrub the evidence, set him up with a gun, and call the bobbies. Our people rule it a suicide, case closed.”

“I still don’t think . . .” The voices faded as the footsteps receded down the hallway. Sophie was still trembling.

“Now.” Hanna hissed, and squirmed out from under the couch, dragging Sophie with her. On the table, she spied her mother’s file; she grabbed it, and turned to go.

“Hanna-“

She spun around in response to Sophie’s voice, and saw a man- presumably one of the ones whose voice she’d heard- standing in the hallway. Sophie was shaking like a leaf next to her, but if anything, he looked as shocked as she felt.

“Hey-“ he began.

Hanna didn’t wait for him to finish. She grabbed the nearest item at hand- a statuette sitting on the hall table- and flung it at him, aiming for his head. The two connected with a crack, and he dropped to the floor. Off in what she assumed was the kitchen, she heard the other man’s voice. “Jim? That you?”

She bolted for the door. This time, Sophie didn’t need to be dragged- she was running even faster than Hanna was. They spilled out onto the porch, and hit the street, feet still pounding. She thought she heard someone behind them, but she didn’t slow or look behind her, just kept running until they were safely lost in the crowds back on High Street.

Sophie let out a long breath. “Did- are they following us?”

Hanna glanced over her shoulder, but saw nothing but ordinary tourists and parents with small children. “I don’t think so.”

“Good.” She let out another shuddery breath. “That’s- good.” Apparently trying to shake off her shivers, she lifted her wrist to check her watch. “Next bus comes in fifteen minutes. Want to take it?”

“Just a moment.” Ignoring the odd stares of the people around her, Hanna pulled the sheaf of papers from under her shirt. She hadn’t been able to grab all of them- some had drifted to the floor on the other side of the table- but there were still enough to hopefully tell her what she wanted to know.

“Yes.” she said, taking Sophie’s hand in her free one. “Let’s go home.”

 

**Epilogue**

“It’s funny,” Sophie said, “but I wouldn’t have thought about writing this at all. Not before.”

Hanna stretched out on the grass, extending her arms above her head, enjoying the pull of her muscles. “How is it going?”

“It’s almost done.” Sophie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, scribbling something on the paper before her. “Hey, would you call me a ‘people person?’”

Hanna considered. “Well, you do talk a lot.”

Sophie threw a handful of grass at her.

After their trip to London, the two had spent days poring over the files Hanna had rescued from Jankovic’s house. Some were incomprehensible- written in so much code that the remaining information was impossible to understand, or heavily blacked out- but there was still enough there to give them a good idea of what exactly had gone on at Reinhild while Hanna’s mother and father (she knew he probably wasn’t, in the truest sense, but she never could quite shake the habit of calling him that) had been there.

It was Sophie who’d suggested sending it all to a newspaper. “That place Fred mentioned, maybe.” She’d said. “They cover this kind of stuff, right? And- he probably had a family. That Jankovic guy, I mean. And the other people who worked on this. Someone should  _know_.”

So she’d written up an e-mail of all of it, and sent it off to the contact person listed on the paper’s site. It had only taken a few hours for them to respond, with more questions than they could fit into a single response. So they went to their office in Birmingham instead. The interview- which had involved sharing all of the files they had found, in addition to giving accounts of their own experiences- had lasted hours. The reporter- a young man only a few years older than them- had scribbled it all down eagerly, and thanked them profusely when it had been time for them to go. On their way out, he’d thrust a paper into Sophie’s hands.

“Take it,” he’d said, “I think you’d be good at it.” Before either of them could ask any questions, he slipped back into his office.

“What is it?” Hanna had asked.

Sophie looked at the paper, and a slow grin spread across her face. “It’s a form for a summer internship.” She looked up. “Hey, you think they’d put me on TV?”

That had been a week earlier. Now, as the term drew to a close, they lay on the front lawn of Sophie’s dorm waiting for her parents to arrive. Hanna was dozing slightly- she’d spent too many late nights recently staying up and poring over her mother’s file until Sophie dragged her to bed- but Sophie was somehow wide awake, frowning and scrubbing the form with her eraser and scribbling in something new. She’d been doing it for a solid hour. Now, at last, she lay the paper down and stretched out on the grass next to Hanna. She closed her eyes. “I think I’ll show it to Mum before I send it in.”

“You already know they want to hire you.” Hanna said, yawning a little. “They wouldn’t have given you the form otherwise.”  
  
Sophie said nothing, but yawned after her. Then she giggled. “You’ve got to stop that, it’s contagious."  
  
“Mmm-hmm.” Hanna picked up a piece of grass and rolled it between her fingers. She glanced at her watch- Sophie had insisted on giving one to her after they got back from London. “Sophie?"  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“What did you tell your parents about me?”  
  
Sophie rolled her head to the side to look at Hanna. “That you were in the neighbourhood and looked me up, and now you’re staying with me. Mum said you could stay with us for the summer.” She leaned over and kissed her lightly. “Don’t worry about it. Mum likes you. So do Dad and Miles.”  
  
Someone whistled at them from across campus, and Sophie looked up to grin and wave at Lisa. She hadn’t seemed at all surprised to find out that they were- in her words- dating. Neither had Fred. He’s just cuffed Sophie on the shoulder and said “good for you,” which didn’t make sense to Hanna, but she wasn’t going to ask.  
  
Hanna propped herself up on her elbows and looked out towards the parking lot. “I think they’re here.”  
  
Sophie sat up and waved. One of the figures approaching- Rachel- waved back. Sophie grabbed Hanna’s hand. “Come on, let’s go meet them.”  
  
Hanna swallowed hard as they approached, trying to push back the nervousness she could feel climbing her throat. She remembered Rachel being kind when she’d travelled with them, but- that had been before Jankovic, before Marissa, even. Back when she had been a child. How would they react to her now, when she had stumbled uninvited back into their lives and dragged Sophie back into all sorts of danger?  
  
She greeted Sophie with a hug first, exclaiming over how she’d grown since she was last at home. Hanna watched awkwardly, fighting the urge to run away and meet Sophie back at the dorms. Running away from Marissa or the operatives in London was simple enough; waiting to be spoken to was agonizing.  
  
Finally- though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes- Rachel turned to her, smiling. Hanna let her breath out in a rush. Rachel took her hand. “Sophie says you’d like to stay with us for the summer. Sebastian and I would like you to, if you’re still interested . . . ?”  
  
Hanna took the offered hand, feeling a smile spread across her face. She could feel Sophie’s hand brushing against her free one, and it made her feel happier than she had in a long time.  
  
She nodded. “Yes.” She shot a sidelong glance at Sophie, who was grinning widely. “Yes, I am.”

 

  
THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Before I started writing this, I would never in a million years have imagined myself completing a 15 000+ word fic, let alone doing it within the space of four months. It's certainly been a challenge for me
> 
> This fic would not have been completed- and would certainly never have been posted- without the input and encouragement of more people than I can count. A million thanks to littledust and mambo-chocobo, who beta read the piece while it was in draft stages. Your work has made this fic what it is now. And another million thanks goes to everyone who cheerlead me on Tumblr while I was in the writing process- sour-idealist, flashandthunderfire, glitterandgrit, glamaphonic, , -redux, dutchydoescoke, and many others. Thanks also go to sentintola, for Britpicking and general advice and support, the artist who illustrated this fic, and the littlebang mods themselves for hosting this challenge. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all.


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